Monday, February 22, 2010

Waking up, February 22

I woke up today and smelled like body. And my first thought was "well, I better go wash this off". And something about it felt like I had said more than I meant to say. It touched on my current thoughts about life like a bee sting feels on the skin, peculiarly painful; hot and cold at the same time: every two mornings, I go and try to rid myself of the way I (were I not taking showers) smell; the way I am. I wash it away, becoming a clean slate for the world around me to direct.

Life is strange right now. This is not uncommon for me to feel- you could almost call it a theme of my life. I don't know why I seem to have a propensity to not feel at ease in my life. But it seems if I am in one place very long the seeds of self awareness begin to grow and question the true nature of the way I am living. Is this the ideal self pointing the accusatory finger back at the real self? Is it fear?

A few years ago a friend of my did a series of photos for a school photo project. The series depicted Peter Pan being dressed up in a suit and relocated to a giant cardboard city. And herein lies the thing that I am afraid of. That I will become what I so was strongly determined not to become. To become what? Well, oddly, I'm not sure I can really place my finger on it. Maybe that is a sign of irrationality- a force of feelings with an unknown base.

Fear. I am afraid. I am afraid. Another theme in my life. So often strength plays out as prominent virtue for me, because I am so often running from fear. Fear of cubicles. Fear of mortgages. Fear of alone. Fear of failing. Fear of being normal, average, the middle.

And I do not want to be run by fear. I think I might even consider it a sin of humanity- to live in one's own fears. And it is difficult, because fear whispers to our very cores: that we are fleeting, that there is no love for us, that we are nothing. So how to overcome, when it seems that all might be lost in a confrontation. In the world of ideology, it would be better to lose it all, but how much harder it is to live that.

This is one angle on where my life is right now, and it feels in my soul like regrowing bones feels to the body. It is a slow process that provides enough discomfort that one way or another, you are always aware of it.

And so it goes. Life is always moving. I wish to move with it. To find the things that are true and to cling to them. To disarm the lies of fear in the world around me. This is me. This is where I am. This is what I thought about as I smelled my body when I woke up this morning.

2 comments:

  1. oh i can relate too well. i have been realizing recently my deep fear of being normal. i have this secretive pride that, because of the traumatic things i have experienced in my life, i am entitled to be unique. i am entitled to have a different and alternative lifestyle. i didn't realize how prideful i was until a few weeks ago. i don't like being normal. i don't like feeling normal. i don't want to feel drawn towards "normal" things. but how am i truly being me if i have to fight myself to be unique. what feels naturally unique, i should be, but what also feels naturally normal, i should let myself be as well.
    ah... read a blog i wrote about similar things a week ago: http://ruminationread.blogspot.com/2010/02/true-tales-tuesdays.html

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  2. I like. I resonate. I'm glad you're here in the city with me.

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